What did we campaign for?

Ahead of the Chancellor’s budget on 22 November, we called on the Chancellor to:

Increase investment in mental health services.

Ring-fence the mental health budget

Along with 11 other leading mental health organisations, wrote an open letter to the Chancellor urging him to take action on our calls. You can read the letter here.

We also asked UKCP members and the public to write to their local MPs, asking them to encourage the Chancellor to answer our calls. This resulted in over 750 emails being sent, and over 340 MPs contacted – the biggest MP contact campaign UKCP has ever conducted.

What did we get?

The chancellor announced an extra £2.8 billion funding for the NHS. It is likely that some of this money will go to mental health services. Most NHS money is spent by local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). The Government’s ‘Mental Health Investment Standard’ rules say if a CCG budget is increased by a certain percentage, it should increase mental health expenditure by the same percentage amount. We are seeking urgently clarity to confirm this will happen.

If our assessment is correct, this budget is a small step towards where we want to be, but there is still a huge journey to go.

We’re going to keep on pushing to ensure people with mental health issues get access to therapy. Politics doesn’t end with one year’s budget, and we have many new, innovative, and powerful campaign ideas in the pipeline.